I live about 18 minutes away from my lab, within the grid system of Uni. of Birmingham’s unofficial student village, Selly Oak. I first moved here back in 2009 and apart from a brief (okay, 1 year and 3 months) stay in Five Ways (the name still makes me smile) it’s been this neighbourhood that I have called home.
Most of the time, walking to work involves switching to auto-pilot and listening to a podcast (I highly recommend The Pod Delusion and Little Atoms) but once in a while I will spot the graffiti a guerilla artist has left behind for the World to marvel over. I actually like graffiti, it doesn’t look unsightly; it adds to the urban landscape, a terrain I have spent my life immersed in. Okay, the quality isn’t consistent, but then again beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so it’s gotta be beautiful to someone, right?
One particular piece that caught my eye was a white label, with something written in permanent marker on it:
This was found a few doors down from number 40 Tiverton Road. I liked the message and even empathised with it. Here I saw someone trying to let someone specific know how much they mean(t) to them, in their own cryptic manner, without giving away many clues to present their identity. That said, the artist (or would author be a better word? Yeh let’s go with author) even signed with an alias/pen-name/pseudonym: MSSD CNNCTN.
Another one turned up, this time on the way home from Sainsburys:
And another one on the side of a recycling bin near Bargain Booze (opposite Selly Oak Station).
A quick google search of this line came up with As I lay Dying’s Confined . The lyrics may be somewhat telling, or maybe not.
…..Aaaaand another one spotted on the front of the now abandoned Gun Barrels pub on Bristol Road…
A plumber? His princess? Finally something a little more specific! For a while I pondered over this, looking at it too literally. Maybe the author met a guy in this pub and they got talking about ‘the one that got away’ or something like that. Then it hit me. Goddamn MARIO!
The last one I saw deviated from the white label format, toward what I would call humorous graffiti, intended to be light-hearted:
It’s very probable that there are more examples of MSSD CNNCTN’s work elsewhere in Selly Oak, but I haven’t seen it. However, there is a Flickr photostream of their work, with stickers turning up in Redditch and Liverpool…
If anyone spots art that could be attributed to their work, please let us know in the comments below! Tweet your sightings along with a log of where and when you found it.
MSSD CNNCTN, if you happen to read this, thanks for making Selly Oak a little more interesting, I find myself more aware of my surroundings, purely in the hopes of finding one of your stickers. I would like to meet you at some point (and no, I’m not a copper).
Should the world end tonight, I just want you to know….
*[edit 27.07.13 12.40] My friend RoughHawkBit identified that MSSD CNNCTN could be ‘Missed Connection’ without the vowels in. Reading the wikipedia article on the practice, it fits pretty well with observations.
(Un)Resolved Thoughts 
Pretty cool! I think the actual person you’re looking for is the owner of the flikr account; they mention they live around Selly Oak in one of their photo’s comments in reply to a comment.
Yeh! It’s pretty cool knowing I could have walked past them and be none the wiser. I should upload some of these to my Flickr account and tag them…
haha i know this bloke. He’ll be glad you know that his work is appreciated.
Thanks for letting him know! Ideally I would like to start a dialogue with the artist but that’s probably unlikely.
Hey thanks so much for this, it was such an entertaining read! I came across it a few weeks ago but I didn’t spot the comments. Feel free to drop me an email at mssdcnnctn@yahoo.com and I’ll answer any (some) of the questions you may have!